Over the past decades, the food supply has evolved with new products such as food supplements, fortified foods and drinks (energy drinks, yoghurts with active bifidus …).
Although food safety is closely supervised and monitored, these new products, often perceived as harmless by consumers, can, under certain conditions, expose them to risks that must be able to be identified. This is the objective of ANSES’s nutrivigilance system, which calls on healthcare professionals to report any information or undesirable effects of a food supplement.
The products concerned by the nutrivigilance system
– Food supplements: the food supplements are defined as “foodstuffs the purpose of which is to supplement the normal diet and which constitutes a concentrated source of nutrients or other substances having a nutritional or physiological effect, alone or in combination […]”. There are different kinds: anti-fatigue, capillaries, cholesterol-lowering drugs, immune defenses, vision, etc.
– Fortified foods: these are foods or drinks enriched with substances for nutritional or physiological purposes such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, plant extracts, etc. Among them, we can cite so-called energizing drinks and products enriched with phytosterols.
– New foods: these are foods or ingredients whose consumption was non-existent in the countries of the European Union before May 15, 1997. Among these foods, we can mention magnolia bark extract, guar gum, noni, or the dehydrated pulp of baobab fruit.
– Foods intended for special nutrition: these foods are intended for certain populations such as infants (milk enriched with vitamins), people with gluten intolerance, the elderly, etc. who have specific nutritional needs.
Since 2010, the nutrivigilance system has received 1,565 cases of adverse effects. Most of the cases received are linked to the consumption of food supplements (76%).